Guest Post: Carol Blattau, Mariner Management
Benchmarking is a powerful tool in helping you – and your volunteer leaders – assess where your chapters are in terms of what’s working and what’s not working. Its power is two-fold: to provide a focus on what’s important and to provide a ready incentive.
Our benchmarking guru Peter Houstle recently shared a case study to highlight one of the key prerequisites — one of 5 — to a successful chapter benchmarking project: the well-designed chapter self-assessment tool.
He emphasizes the need to begin by determining the right data you need to collect from chapters – that is the data that allows your team and your chapter leaders (whether volunteers or staff) to measure their performance against chapters of similar size, budget, location, or other characteristics that matter. This then lets you focus on what’s important, identify bright spots (who’s knocking it out of the park), and confirm the ROI of each chapter (read more here and here). Likewise, it will also help you single out who may need some intervention. And, most importantly, it gives chapter leaders the incentive to go bigger and/or make the necessary changes to grow. A powerful tool. That is, if it’s done effectively.
